The Story

Like a lot of Chef users, I'm using Vagrant for testing my cookbooks. I'm also using Berkshelf for providing the Vagrant box with the cookbooks it needs.
Until recently, I was happy using the ChefDK-provided Berlshelf (v4.0.1). I stopped being happy when running berks started consuming …

Update 04.07.15

This method doesn't work anymore because of some weird AWS restriction, which says you can't connect the root device of a marketplace AMI (like the CentOS one) to another VM, lest you discover its secrets.
I developed a better method which involves either rebooting or creating …

The Story

I recently wiped my CubieTruck (a single board computer, like RaspberryPi), and tried installing the root filesystem on a hard drive instead of the built-in NAND, due to the NAND's tendency to get corrupted.
I used Igor Pečovnik's Image, which is really convenient, as I like it better …

The Story

I'm using Amazon's EC2 for some of my VMs, which run CentOS.
When viewing Block Device Mappings (mapping between the virtual storage - ebs, ephemerals etc. and the block devices inside the VM) in CentOS 6.5, I ran into an annoying issue.
When inspecting my instance metadata using …

Note: Although my experience is with Debian, I think this post helps anyone using some modern Linux distribution.

What is TRIM?

As a Windows sysadmin, I didn't really consider the cons of running on top of Solid-State Drives, or SSDs. These drives are based on flash memory (similar to a Disk-On-Key), rather than metallic plates.
A big difference between magnetic hard drives and SSDs is block reuse.
more ...

The Story
For reasons unknown to me, Debian's NTP daemon only works on udp port
123, even when operating as a client.
This is a problem because my network configuration does not allow
incoming packets on this port, thus preventing my raspberrySeed
(raspberry pi running Debian, deluge, flexget) from syncing …

I'm trying to use a Raspberry Pi as a torrentbox (an always-on
BitTorrent client).
If I ever finish this project, I'll defiantly post my build.
Anyway, I had a really annoying problem - every once in a while, the
Deluge …